Trey Ang Tuk Kroeung

Along the Mekong the river is the pantry, and the plainest thing a river cook can do with a good fish is clamp it in split bamboo and stand it over coals. Trey ang — grilled fish — is nationwide, but the riverbank version paired with tuk kroeung is its fullest form: a modern-kingdom table dish, laid out family-style with the fish in the middle and a landslide of raw vegetables around it. Nothing here is fussy, and everything depends on freshness — the fish, the herbs, the lime, all of it as recently alive as you can manage. It is a dish that turns a meal into an hour, because you assemble every bite by hand.

Score the fish deeply, oil and salt it, and grill it slow over a medium bed of coals, flipping once, until the skin crackles and lifts and the flesh at the thickest part pulls white and clean off the bone. The dip does the heavy lifting: prahok, lemongrass, galangal, and lime leaf pounded to a rough kroeung, sharpened with lime and palm sugar and given its signature smoke by a couple of charred eggplants mashed through it. To eat, lay a scrap of fish on a lettuce leaf, pile on herbs and cucumber and long bean, spoon the tuk kroeung over, and wrap. The fermented funk of the prahok against the raw green crunch is the entire argument for eating this way, and it wins every time.